The man-made global warming hoax must be exposed before it’s getting too late.

Some news: Obama and Geithner, Bush and Paulson are why these problems exist in the first place and why they will never see a solution in the context of the present system through the use of parliamentary remedies. Sometimes we grasp these things slowly.

Maybe next year they’ll just go with more G20′s and no G8.

There are clear perception splits between Americans and Europeans, and much more drastically with the Russians, who are still out there in a cold fog, fuming with the desire of getting even, and a miscomprehensions about the rights of other nations (many Russian advisers believe the USA should have a right to own the Americas, like Russia has a right to own the old USSR in its entirety).

As Churchill put it, Jaw-jaw is better than war-war. War is what happened with Georgia, last summer.

Patrice Ayme

The G7 and G8 are certainly outdated.

The BRIC, with Indonesia added, needs to be
included in the world’s financial discussion.

A conference call would also save tons of carbon emissions from leaders’ planes.

To answer your questions in the order offered:

Why Bother/What’s the Point? If Hu Jintao can’t answer this question, how can you expect me to? Neither of us heads up a G7 state, though he does have a better claim to public visibility than those of us down on the Rez.

Important or frivolous? Compared to attending the Michael Jackson memorial service or answering questions raised by your prostitute, important. The minute public optics shift, the pageantry will be populated with B list. I daresay Hu left a Chinese observer behind when he returned to address more pressing matters. Maybe a ministry official of Sino-German heritage named Bi Lizst?

Why talk individually to Germany, Italy, France and Britain? Because it makes the populations and policy elites of those countries feel more important than than if they were, say, Brazilian, Indian or Mexican. It’s not all about the American ego and self-centered complacency. Smug self-absorption is a developed world disease, not an American one.

So, how’d I do on your little quiz?

Point 4)

The movement of global capital and currencies has dramatically accelerated in the last 30 years. Yet G7/G8 meetings remain relatively infrequent. They are neither large nor inclusive enough to allow big/deep change (as SJ notes), but are not frequent enough so serve as a week-to-week policy coordination vehicle.

If anything, the G7/G8 is harmful, because it gives our fearfully doe-eyed Treasury team an excuse to delay action that should be rapid and forceful.

In this recent crisis, the only really big significant coordinated policy move (the simultaneous lowering of rates by central banks) occurred early in the crisis and without the benefit of a G7/G8 meeting. (It was one of the few things that gave us some hope of a real response, only to leave us feeling betrayed when it was followed by months of bickering and incompetence as the entire world economy ground to a halt.)

The second largest policy initiative (more funding for the IMF) occurred at the G20 (and was carefully negotiated prior).

Increasingly, the G7/G8 seems like an excuse to do nothing “until the next meeting”, while its member countries get eaten alive by their own inaction and their failure to respond to the mercantilist policies of their trading partners.